ashington
Irving, in his _Life of Columbus_--which is, throughout, an elegant
but labored apology for its hero--"to determine the precise time when
Columbus first conceived the design of seeking a western route to
India. It is certain, however, that he meditated it as early as the
year 1474, though as yet it lay crude and unmatured in his mind."

The year 1474, as we know, was that in which Toscanelli sent him the
letter and the chart. In that letter the route to India was laid down,
and on that chart it was made clear to any seafaring man how Cathay
might be reached, by merely sailing westward! By setting his helm, and
persisting in a westerly course, any one might reach the coast that
was supposed to lie opposite to Europe and Africa. Columbus did that,
according to directions received from Toscanelli eighteen years
before. He did nothing more, and he reached, not the coast of India,
but the outlying islands of a new world since called America.

The idea, then, which Columbus claimed as exclusively his own was
conveyed to him by Toscanelli--or, at least, it so appears--and
Toscanelli obtained it from the ancients. For, says one having
authority, "Eratosthenes, accepting the spherical theory, had advanced
the identical notion which nearly seventeen hundred years later
impelled Columbus to his voyage. He held the known world to span
one-third of the circuit of the globe, as Strabo did at a later day,
leaving an unknown two-thirds of sea; and if it were not that the vast
extent of the Atlantic Sea rendered it impossible, one might even sail
from the coast of Spain to that of India, along the same parallel."

And again: "An important element in the problem was the statement of
Marco Polo regarding a large island, which he called Cipango, and
which he represented as lying in the ocean off the eastern coast of
Asia. This carried the eastern verge of the Asiatic world farther
than the ancients had known, and, on the spherical theory, brought
land nearer westward from Europe than could earlier have been
supposed.... Humboldt has pointed out that neither Christopher
Columbus nor his son Ferdinand mentions Marco Polo; still, we know
that the former had read his book."[5]

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Justin Winsor, in _The Narrative and Critical History of America_.

[5] _Narrative and Critical History of America._

III

VESPUCCI'S FAVORITE AUTHORS

1485-1490

Books of any sort were few and precious during the youthfu